


Reconciliation

by BarefootGirl



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-19
Updated: 2016-03-19
Packaged: 2018-05-27 15:16:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6289615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BarefootGirl/pseuds/BarefootGirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Prayers are just the beginning to some serious soul-searching.”</p><p>Or:  after spilling his guts to the priest in "Paint it Black," Dean discovers that confession is good for the smut, er, soul.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reconciliation

“Prayers are just the beginning to some serious soul-searching.”  
  
_I prayed to you Cas!  Every night!_

  
“There's things, there's...people, feelings that I-I-I want to experience differently than I have before, or maybe even for the first time.”  
  
    He still couldn’t believe those words came out of his mouth.  In his head, yeah.  He’d been creeping around them for…hell, a long time now.  A really long time.  But that was inside.  

    But then he’d been sitting there, spinning some cock and bull story for the priest, laying it on thick for their ghost to overhear, and the guy had gone all… thoughtful on him.  Not pushing, the way Sammy always did.  Just sitting there in the dark, and knowing that anything he said, it would never leave that closet.  Would never be repeated, never thrown back at him…  
    And the words had come stumbling out.  Jesus.  
    Dean shifted uneasily in his seat, uncomfortable on the wrong side of Baby, Sammy behind the wheel, not the natural order of things. He’d lied to the priest, during that case. Except he hadn’t, really. Those things…that was how he’d gotten by.  Growing up the way they did, he’d never had the chance to make a decent connection  Here today, knowing you’d be gone tomorrow… sometimes them looking at you like you were a knight on a white goddamned horse, when they weren’t staring at you like you were worse than the monster you’d saved them from, anyway.  
    But most of the women…. He tried to be honest.  They knew he wasn’t the staying kind.  Even Lisa… he’d tried, swear to god he’d tried, but he just didn’t know how to stay.  Not when hunting waited on the other side.  Hunting, Sammy… he couldn’t walk away.  
    And he was…tired of that.  Tired of…  
    He was tired, that was all.  
    “Gonna catch some zee’s, Sammy.  Wake me when we hit the state line.”  
    “Yeah, okay.”  
      
    They made it back to the bunker a week later, only pausing for one salt-and-burn at the hotel they’d crashed in, a former guest who really didn’t want to check out. Dean was not holding his breath to see if the godawful pimpmobile was parked in front of the bunker, and he wasn’t let down when it wasn’t.  If Cas was in trouble, or needed help, he’d call.  That was the agreement, and they’d double-teamed him with guilt and logic until the angel agreed, however cranky he was about it.  
    They staggered off to bed, relieved to be home, already worried about what was going to happen next, but mostly just still so damn tired.  And if his bedroom felt too empty, and his bed too cold, at least the pillows were soft, and his mattress remembered him.  
  
    “That suit looks good on you.  But that tie’s all wrong.”  
    “And you’re the arbiter of fine men’s fashion?”  
    “As a matter of fact....”  Ness tugged the tie loose, up close in Dean’s personal space, and tossed it onto the bed, then plucked a different tie off the dresser and held it up to Dean’s neck.  
    “Better.”  
    “Ezra trained you, huh?”  
    “You think a man can’t have a sense of style?”  
    “I think Ezra trained you.”  
    His laugh was low and deep, and if it made Dean’s dick stir a little more than he was comfortable with, he was going to put it down to the fact that it was Elliot Fucking Ness with his hands on him, all right?  Hero worship, no matter how wrong the movie had been, that’s all it was.  
    The dream shifted, the memory fading into wisps of steam, and he was standing in the foyer of an old Victorian.  
    “Stop lying to yourself, Dean.”  Tessa’s voice, from how many years, how many lives ago?  
    “I’m trying, Tess,” he told the ceiling, his eyes open before he was actually awake.  “I’m trying.”  
    “Dean.”  
    The voice wasn’t as gravely as it had been, once.  Heaven’s sore throat, he’d called that sound, once, and almost made a joke about a kicked-out throat, then remembered at the last minute that he’d - then - been talking to an angel who still had the mojo to drop him back into the pit, if he sassed him too hard.  
    And after that… the idea, the visual, wasn’t safe to keep around.  
    Dean rolled over, blinking to clear his vision.  “Cas.  What’re ya… when did you get in?”  
    “Just now.”  
    Cas looked like crap.  Even in the shadows, Dean could tell that.  He made a mental note to check the pimpmobile’s suspension, make sure Cas wasn’t getting jounced too much, ‘cause he wouldn’t even know the ride was supposed to be smooth, no matter how many times he’d ridden in the Impala.  
“Yeah.  Um.  Well, welcome back.”  Why are you in my bedroom, standing there watching me sleep again?  He didn’t ask it, but the quirk of Cas’s lips meant his expression probably asked it loud and clear.    
    “I encountered Sam in the kitchen.  He said that you had partaken of Reconciliation, during your last case.”  
    “What?”  He thought of half a dozen ways he could kill his brother that would be painful but probably not permanent.  “Um.  Yeah.  We had to flush a ghost from a church,  it was killing… you know man, it’s too early to be giving case notes.”  
    He sat up, feeling every tendon in his body giving him shit about it.  Too old, way too old for this drive-anywhere crap, too old for crappy motel beds and grease three meals a day when he was on the road.  
    “I think I’m gonna start eating salad,” he said out loud.  
    “That will please Sam.”  
    “Yeah well, not doing it for him, okay?”  
    He reached over and turned on the lamp, blinking a little at the sudden light.  Cas looked even worse out of the shadows: his face drawn, eyes squinted less Smite of God and more human wear and tear.  “Jesus, man.  Have you been sleeping at all?”  
    “Perhaps not as much as I should.  It seems…” He made a helpless gesture with his arms, the white shirtsleeves still odd to Dean’s eyes, without the protective layer of tan coat.     “Is it always like this?  The sense of too much to do, and never enough time.  Except when all you have is time and there’s nothing you can do?”  
    Dean laughed.  “Yeah no, you’ve got it pretty sussed out there, Cas.”  He hesitated, then sat up all the way, swinging his feet to the floor.  “That needing to do stuff, always having something more to do?  That’s…that’s because you’re part of the world.  It matters to you.  And that’s good.  I mean, it sucks, don’t get me wrong, but it’s good.  Hold onto that.  That’s what makes it worthwhile.”  
    That got him another squinty-eyed look.  “You are doing what your brother refers to as last-minute instructions.  Dean.”  And when did he get to know Cas so well that he could see the minute changes in his _squinting_ , for fuck’s sake?  “What happened on that last case?  What did Sam not tell me?”  
    “The question’s probably what _did_ he tell you,” and Dean waved away any answer Cas might have given.  “No, never mind.  I know that kid, he wanted you to come in and give me a heart to heart again, right?  Worried that I’m not entirely on board about saving my ass?  You can tell him it’s okay, Cas. I don’t want to die.  No interest in being a demon again, or going to heaven, not any part of dying.  I’m not on board with it.”  
    “Good. That’s…good.”    
    But he didn’t leave, just stood there, watching Dean, until even by their admittedly fucked-up standards it had gone on too long.  Like he was…waiting.  
    “There something else, Cas?”  
    A slight head shake, like he wanted to say no but couldn’t.  Then he sat down next to Dean on the bed, close enough that their hips bumped.  
    “You are aware, of course, that Cain went on his…mission, in order to draw you out, force you to honor your promise and kill him.”  
    “Yeah.  I know.  He’d had enough, Abbadon was finally gone, he didn’t…he didn’t have any reason to try and keep going, keep holding back.  So he let go.  And you know that’s gonna be me someday, right?  No matter how much I fight it, eventually Sammy’s going to be gone, you’re going to be gone, and there won’t be anything, anyone left to keep me human.”  
    There was a pain behind his eyes when he said that, when he thought of Ben, of Emma.  But no; better his bloodline stopped here.  And if Ben was his kid, or not, if he never knew, maybe he’d be safe.  
    Cain would have killed Ben.  Hell of a way to find out once and for all if Lisa had been lying.  He couldn’t risk it.  
    “You are not Cain.  He was the first, but that also meant he did not have the experiences you did, the training…nor the love of humanity that has driven you this far.  You are Righteous, Dean.  Even now.”  
      “Yeah.  Well.  I uh,” and his mouth went dry.  “I’m trying, Cas. I really am.  To look at things differently.  Not… not fall into old ruts, just ‘cause that’s the way it’s always been, the way I was taught.  But you gotta let me let go of that, too.  All right?  ‘M not him, I can’t be him, not if I’m going to hold onto the life I’ve got, for as long as I’ve got it.  You gotta let me go.”  
   _Let me go, Sammy._   He’d meant it, but he hadn’t understood it, not then.    
    “I mean, I don’t know what I’m doing here, okay?  And this thing on my arm…it’s still there.  It’s always gonna be there, no matter how hard Sam tries, no matter how hard you look for some scrub-a-dub solution.  So yeah, I know you’re gonna keep looking and Sammy’s gonna keep looking, but I…  I gotta be here, in the time I’ve got left to be _me._ ”  
    “And who is that, Dean?”  
    And there’s the angel with the hundred thousand dollar question.  
    “Somebody who’s not scared.”  
    Another lie.  He was terrified.  If he weren’t so dehydrated, he’d be peeing-his-boxers scared.  But in this room, the single light casting shadows, Cas sitting next to him, body turned away but his head turned toward him, that inquisitive, always-fucking-accepting look on his face, and nothing would ever leave this room either.  Nothing that happened in here would ever come back to him, thrown back in laughter or anger…  
    He turned, shifted his hips, put his hands up, cupping that jawline the way the angel had done to him so many times, and grinned, shaky and uncertain but still a grin.  “Not the last night on earth, unless we missed a memo, and you managed a pretty memorable cherry-pop on your own, but-“  
    The rest of his speech was cut off by two fingers pressing against his lips, and hooded eyes gone wide.  
    He wasn’t sure what that expression on the angel’s face was.  Shock, yeah.  Surprise.  But not disgust, not that it showed anyway, though it might come when he got over-  No. Cas didn’t care about gender, he’d said that when he was playing god, and the things he’d said and done then, that had been him, if a little jacked up on soul-juice.  
    Before Cas could say anything, he’d sucked those two fingers between his teeth, giving them a playful tug, then pulling them further into his mouth.  Cas’ fingers were calloused now, the nails filed smooth, and his skin tasted of salt and the faintest tang of gunpowder, and then those fingers pulled out, replaced by lips that were salty and rough and a tongue that was all smooth, and Dean smiled into the kiss, his hands curling around Cas’ scalp, threading themselves into his hair, turning him to just the right angle to take control of the kiss.  
    He should have known it wouldn’t be that easy.  Angel strength resisted and Dean had a moment of panic before realizing that the resistance was to control, not pull away. Something inside him eased, his head falling back as Cas’ mouth moved from his lips down across his chin, chasing the line of his neck, hot, open mouthed kisses alternating with sharp nips.  
    “Where the hell’d you learn that?” Dean managed to ask, giving that thick, cowlicked hair a gentle tug in response.  
    “From you.”  His voice was practically powered-up-angel growl-level.  “Every dream, every wish, every longing.  I cataloged every one,” and that earned him a bite at the clavicle that made him grunt, clearly and enthusiastically the good kind of grunt.  
    “You got a hicky kink, Cas?”  
    “I may.”  
    Something different.  Something new.  He yanked that dark hair, hard, and was rewarded with a faint groan, Cas lifting his mouth - open, wet, teeth showing above chapped lips - to stare up at him.  
    “Everything?  You cataloged everything, Cas?”  
    “Everything that didn’t have breasts,” and there was the asperity he’d been missing, his angel squint-eyed and exasperated. Hotter than a stripper in devil panties, hotter than a devil a _nd_ an angel in panties, he’d admit it now, because this he could touch, this could be his, could be real, if he didn’t fuck it up.  “You are aware that bisexuality is not a sin in my fa-“  
    “Don’t kill the mood, Cas.”  
    Sassing an angel; surefire way to land on his knees.  You’d think he’d have learned that by now.  He grinned up at Cas from between his legs, his fingers missing the feel of that hair underneath them, but already replacing that with the feel of wool slacks, the familiar feel of a zipper, odd at this angle but easy enough to pull down, and Cas wore Y-fronts, what do ya know.  
    And angel dick was _warm_.  Slick-smooth and blood-hot, and Dean imagined it in his mouth, imagined it in his ass, and he groaned, his thoughts and wants tumbling over each other like Pandora’s damn box finally flipped open, everything flying out the open window, leaving only hope behind.  
    He wasn’t sure how he could feel his mouth watering, and have his mouth feel so dry, all at once. He’d lost his virginity early - not as early as he claimed, but never mind that - but he didn’t think he’d been that nervous then.  
    It hadn’t _mattered_ so much, back then.  
    His hand wrapped around that warm length, and he gave a preliminary tug,  fingers curling and thumb pressing underneath. Jimmy had been circumcised, and his thumb flicked the tip curiously, gratified by the low moan coming from above him.  
    “Dean.”  
    “You’re always telling me to be less reckless, man.  I’m scouting the lay of the land, making plans….”  
    He was pretty sure Cas wouldn’t smite him, if he even could now with his grace running so low.  But just to make sure, he dipped his head and took that warm, smooth heat into his mouth.  It was awkward at first, making him wonder if girls got classes in how to do this when the guys were learning how to grunt and build fire, or something.  
    Then fingers were sliding past his temples, stroking against his scalp, thumbs brushing against the tips of his ears, sliding down his cheeks and pushing in until he hollowed them, sliding down the length as much as he dared because gagging would totally kill the mood, letting Cas direct the action while he worried about keeping his teeth clear of delicate flesh, his own hands sliding up those thighs until his thumbs pressed against the rough, tight sacs, pressing and nudging in rhythm with his mouth until a shudder warned him and he pulled off, not quite in time to miss the mess splatting against his shirt, and it wasn’t as hot as it looked in porn but somehow it was…  
    Cute the way Cas gasped, a satisfied, sated noise, and then looked guilty, like cumming on a guy’s chest was bad manners.  
    “Dean.”  And fucked-up god in a fucked-up heaven but Cas sounded twice as wrecked as he looked, dazed and slackjawed, and Dean was done thinking, letting go of everything except the need to have that stupid fucker on his back and flat on the bed as soon as possible.  
  
  
Dean’s bed was body-warm, and soft, and the sheets and pillows smelled of him, of night-sweat and semen and the acrid bitter taste of gunpowder that somehow never washed off his hands.  
    If an angel were allowed their own heaven, this would be his, if he were eventually some day allocated a space in some hallway, it would be here, the shadows wrapped around them, the faint thumps and mechanical grumbles of the Bunker’s floors and walls, the occasional chink-chink of the plumbing or the distant muted noise of a television or clatter of dishes fading under the closer scrape of skin against skin, the rougher whisper of denim and flannel and worn-soft cotton, the heavy thunk of workboots hitting linoleum floor, the grunt of grown men arranging themselves on a bed barely large enough for them both, yanking blankets aside, sinking down into the mattress legs tangled now, sticky and warm, the suck and tug against his earlobe, warm breath at the hollow of his throat, and he wanted he **wanted** to return the favor, all the favors Dean had ever granted him, but hands held his elbows down, far more effective than a wrist-hold, and the low laugh that rose from Dean’s throat when he tried to buck - not to push him off, but to get closer - made his penis stir valiantly, despite awareness that it could not recover so quickly, that his body, although inexperienced, was not in fact a teenager’s.  
    “Dean.”  It was a growl, a command, a plea, and this close, chest to chest, he could feel the shudder that went through the hunter’s body at the sound of his name, although the hold never slackened.  
    He had known - known the desires that flickered in the Righteous Man’s body, felt the thoughts pressed down under weight and training, the urges never acted-on, the needs never fulfilled; Castiel had hoped in his weak-fleshed moments that some of those might find their way to him yet never able, never daring to articulate, if he’d been able to find the shape of the words to ask.  
    In the end, it was one syllable, four letters, a keen rising from his throat, stroked up out of him by hands and tongue and mouth, reshaping him not into a new thing but a true thing, blood hot and flesh prickling, the muscles of his ass and back tensing and shaking, his fingers clenching into the sheets below him.  The brush of Dean’s body against his, silken flesh and muscle pressing against his legs, pushing his thighs open.  
    “Please,” he said, as he’d once asked for nothing save his Father’s voice in the emptiness.  “Dean, please.”  He had almost lost Dean.  Again. Might still lose him, to the Mark, to his own fears, to a demon or monster that moved faster just once, but he refused to think about that now, shoved the fears down the way humans did, just to survive, and focused only on the texture of Dean’s skin above him, the slip of the sheets below, the ache that seemed to come from within and without at the same time, stretching and compressing him into nothing but want.  
    “Fuck.”  Dean’s voice was raspy, despondent instead of heated, but he didn’t let go of Castiel’s elbows, didn’t move away; this isn’t rejection, it’s realization.  “I don’t.. Fuck of all the times not to have condoms-“  
    Heated, selfish pleasure; the idea of skin to skin, flesh _in_ flesh, and the low moan that escaped him must have conveyed some of that, because there was no more delay, his elbows freed, Dean’s mouth, slick and hot, then the press of a thumb against tight muscle and he _willed_ the flesh there to soften, the passage to ease until one, two, three fingers slid easily, probing and testing, pressing and stroking, twisting against each other and then -  
    “Ahhh” a rattle low in his throat, sparks behind his eyes, grace flooding in response to the sudden surge of…oh joy, he acknowledged, joy and adoration that should be blasphemous for him to feel under such fleshly stimulus but could never be anything other than holy.  His own penis rose, half-hard again, and he felt his sacs tighten in anticipation.  
    “There we go,” and Dean’s voice was rough and smug, fingers pulling from the channel only long enough to bring his body into alignment, Dean’s hand taking one of his own, wrapping their fingers around his shaft so that together they brought him to bear, sliding home, inch by slow inch, mouths gasping the same warm puffs of air, his thighs braced against Dean’s, hands scrabbling against his back, unable to stop himself from digging his nails in and hearing the groan that caused, the hard jerk of Dean’s body against his own, and digging harder, then Dean pulled away and slammed back in, and Castiel could do nothing but hold on, letting the sensations twine with the fragments of grace he retained, flooding his body, his thoughts, until he could feel it pressing against his skin, all the formless longing and need shaped and speeding at him, greater than any cupid’s arrow, slamming into him even as he felt Dean surge one last time and pulse once, twice, a third time, before sagging forward, mouth wet on Castiel’s shoulder, sweat dripping, sticky and too warm and too perfect to ever move.  
    “Too fast.”  Dean managed to sound both sated and mortified.  “M’sorry.”    
    “Shut up.”  He shifted enough that he could reach one bare shoulder, and bit down, hard, gratified when the hunter yelped.  “If you had taken longer, I would have been insulted.”  
    He wasn’t sure if laughter was the correct response after coitus, but the way Dean wrapped himself around him, pulling them together again, made him think perhaps it was.  
    “Do better next time,” his hunter promised, voice thick with exhaustion, mumbling half into the pillow.  “Not gonna waste any more time.”  
    Castiel managed to pull the blanket out from the tangle of their legs, pulling it up over them, hearing what Dean didn’t say: that there was so little time left to them.  
    “Be thou not afraid,” he whispered, feeling the mortal slip into sleep, his dreams shaded with sorrow, tinted by the Mark’s rage, but peaceful, for now.  “Be thou not afraid, nor dismayed.” He had waited too long, had not dared hope against this moment, that he would allow either of them to fear what was to come.    
    What man had - finally! - brought together, not even heaven might set apart.    
  
  
      
   

**Author's Note:**

> Beta'd by the wonderous relucant. Anything still fucked up is my fault, not hers.


End file.
